State Watchdog threatens to block Twitter under new blogger bill

A senior official from Russian control agency Roskomnadzor says new restrictions would apply to all bloggers who write in Russian, even if they live abroad, adding that whole platforms can be blocked inside the country for refusal to cooperate.

The new law defines ‘popular bloggers’ as those having 3,000 or
more visitors per day and demands that such people were
registered under their real names and follow some basic rules
similar to those mentioned in the Law on Mass Media – verify
their reports and abstain from posting slander or anything that
can be described as ethnic, religious or social hatred. The law
must come into force on August 1 this year.

However, the law has no provisions connected with the global and
trans-border nature of blogs and the internet as a whole. The
document is not saying directly if it applies to cases in which
both the authors of blogs and the blog platforms are based
outside Russia.

Deputy head of Roskomnadzor Maksim Ksendzov said that this would
not matter.

“The law is not tied to the territorial registration or
passport data. If someone writes in Russian or any other language
used by the peoples of the Russian Federation, if he or she is
seeking to attract the Russian audience’s attention and if they
use Russian sites for this, such people will have to observe the
law,” the official said in an interview with popular daily
Izvestia.

Ksendzov added that as the law offers no means to influence the
foreign-based bloggers the Russian agency would most likely have
to block the whole blog platform or social network in Russia, but
only after they refuse to take down the illegal content.
Roskomnadzor already practices such scheme as part of the
enforcement of the federal law that bans the dissemination of
terrorist and extremist information and also the federal law on
protection of children.

The official said that major companies like Twitter and Facebook
were still reluctant to cooperate, unlike Google that had been
removing offensive and illegal videos from its YouTube portal for
some time already.At the same time, the way Twitter was encoding
its traffic would lead to complete blocking of the microblogging
service on the Russian territory even after Roskomnadzor blocks
only one tweet, he noted.

Ksendzov suggested in the interview Twitter’s objectives in
Russia were not only commercial, but also political and this was
the reason of the uncooperativeness.

“Twitter is a global tool for distribution of political
information. When they interact with us they use the audience as
a means for reaching their goals. At the same time the value
users and their interests for the company is extremely low,”
the head of the Russian watchdog said.

“By gradually refusing to comply with our demands they are
deliberately creating the conditions in which the blocking of
this resource on our country’s territory becomes practically
inevitable,” Ksendzov complained.

Following the release of the interview senator Ruslan Gattarov
also blasted Twitter’s uncooperativeness at a Friday session of
the Upper House’s commission for development of information
society.

“The ugliest situation of all is that we have with Twitter.
This company is not observing the Russian laws and only slightly
reacts to the Roskomnadzor demands,” Gattarov said.

At the same time, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, known
for his fondness with technology and gadgets, has played down the
situation in his Facebook account.

“As an active user of social networks, I hold that the
Russian laws must be observed by everyone – the networks and the
users alike. But certain civil servants, responsible for the
development of the industry must sometimes turn their brains on
and give no interviews that announce the shutdown of social
networks,” Medvedev wrote.

Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that the
authorities in the Kremlin were convinced that all foreign
companies must observe all laws in force on the Russian
territory. “The law exists to be observed,” Peskov told
Interfax.